The present invention provides techniques for integrating instant messaging with Internet search features, and more particularly, to techniques for initiating Internet searches within an instant messaging application.
The Internet offers various ways for users to communicate with other users, such as instant messaging. Instant messaging (IM) has become increasingly popular. Instant messaging provides communication within a closed community, i.e., only registered users can send or receive messages via an instant messaging service. Users are required to sign in to the same system (or possibly the same server) with a pre-selected user name and password before sending messages.
Instant messaging software typically allows a user to define a list of “friends” (i.e., other registered users with whom the user wishes to communicate) and to reject or ignore messages sent by other users. An IM user can create a user profile that contains personal information about the user. An IM user can access a friend's user profile through the IM software to see what information the friend has published about himself or herself.
Often IM users have a desire to search the Internet to locate more information about other IM users. An IM user may also want to search the Internet to locate information about topics that are related to an active IM conservation. Current IM applications do not allow a user to link directly to the Internet to perform searches. Therefore, an IM user must manually open a separate web browser window to link to an Internet search engine web page. After typing in search criteria into the Internet search engine web page, the IM user typically has to manually flip through numerous search results to locate web sites that are relevant to another IM user or to a particular topic.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide techniques for integrating instant messaging with Internet search capabilities.